”Welcome to Yorkshire” parts company with colourful Chief Executive


Sir Gary Verity has been sacked by the Yorkshire Tourism development company “Welcome to Yorkshire”.  Sir Gary left the company on Friday citing “health” reasons.

An article in today’s Sunday Time puts more flesh on the bones of the announcement.

It includes worrying allegations of bullying and expenses irregularities.

Welcome to Yorkshire (WTY) replaced the Yorkshire Tourist Board which used to have its headquarters in York on Tadcaster Road. WTY moved out and currently lets the Tadcaster Road building to another organisation. Its registered office address is now in Leeds.

 Tourism in York is run via “Visit York” which in turn is partly funded by the “Make it York” Quango. Over £1 million a year is paid by York taxpayers to that organisation. It is not however directly linked with WTY.

York does get some benefits from WTY publicity. A local race meeting has been sponsored and some advertising has taken place at the railway station.

Welcome to Yorkshire receives grants from both central and local government. Its Board includes four Councillors (3 Tory and 1 Labour). They are Carl Les (North Yorkshire), Richard Cooper (Harrogate), Stephen Parnaby (East Yorkshire) and Steve Brady (Hull)

Other Board members mainly have business backgrounds. The Chair is Ron McMillan who was formerly with Price Waterhouse.

Two other Directors left the company in March

WTY is a private company limited by guarantee. Its detailed expenditure – and income – is largely opaque. However, it is most widely known for sponsorship of sporting events. These include cycle races. cricket and horse racing.  The level of hospitality associated with these events is likely to be the subject of conjecture over the next few days.

WTY had a turnover of just over £4 million in the year to March 2018 (the last figures available).

About half this went on the cost of employing 46 staff. One Director – understood to be Sir Gary – received £243,453 .

WTY reported a profit of £251,173 in the year.

As a private company Welcome to Yorkshire is not subject to Freedom of Information legislation.

However with a significant part of its income coming from taxpayers, many will feel that more transparency is required in its dealings.

York Council rapped by Local Government Association inspectors

York residents can now see for the first time a copy of the damming report produced on the Council by the Local Government Association.

Although worded in diplomatic, conciliatory language it confirms the view held by many residents.

Namely that the new Labour administration elected in 2011 metaphorically threw away the rule book as they tried to implement a, hopelessly overambitious, programme of change against a background of falling resource levels.

Relationships within the Council broke down and inexperienced Councillors – catapulted into key decision making roles – had neither the confidence nor inclination to seek consensus support for their proposals.

Secrecy became a byword, denying residents the opportunity to contribute before decisions were taken.

There were complaints of bullying.

Councillors tried to “micro manage” – distracting staff from their principal responsibilities

The problem was exacerbated  by the Council Leadership who tried to fully exploit the Councils public relations machine to justify their partisan views.

The report also criticises outside “commentators” (people using social media sites and “twitter” to criticise) and describes the number of FOI requests as being unreasonably high.

However the number of FOI requests increased after 2011 simply because access to performance data – freely available in earlier years – was hidden by the new administration

The report is being considered by the Councils Governance committee on Thursday

The LGA team make several suggestions about how a more constructive way forward can be developed.

Until the extraordinary events at the “urgency” meeting held 10 days ago – together with the more recent power grab by senior officials – that was a worthy opportunity which seemed to have some chance of success.

But clearly confrontation is likely to increase in the run up to the elections in May and it seems increasingly likely that the election of a new Council will be needed before the unhappy events of the last 4 years can finally be confined to history.

Electors will not make the same mistake again.

 They will be looking for candidates (of whatever party) who have a mature outlook on life, relevant experience, a proven commitment to York and the neighbourhood which they seek to represent. as well as a record of putting the City ahead of political ambitions..